Cyrus MacMillan

“ It is not for you to join in the follies of frivolous pleasure-seekers, or to sacrifice the true culture of your minds and hearts to the mere pursuit of gain. Your aims are higher, and require isolation from the outer world, and self-denial, in the hope that what you are now sowing and planting, will bear good fruit in all your future lives. Live up to this ideal, and bear in mind that self-control, and the habits of mind which it implies, are of themselves worth more than all the sacrifices you make. ”

“ The men who in its hundred years of life brought to McGill the largest portion of its fame, whether graduates or professors, were products of the new country in the young manhood of which he had such unbounded faith. They were, for the most part, native Canadians whose feet were rooted in the soil. They were men whose ancestors, like the Founder himself, had crossed the ocean in comfortless craft to face unknown hardships in forest and on plain, to build homes from the wilderness in which they might find happiness and fortune. ”

“ We are, every one of us I hope, loyal to our University, and to the University as a whole, not merely to any particular faculty of it. McGill has endeavoured, more than most universities, carefully to adapt its teaching to the actual wants and needs of the student, whether in the matter of that general academical learning which makes the educated man, or of that special training which fits the graduate for taking his place, creditably, in the highest walks of professional life. ”

“ And so he dreamed of a great University which would not only be local in its usefulness, serving a small city which his faith told him would one day grow to giant size, but also national in its influence, and ministering to the enlightenment of that larger Canada which his vision saw in the far and dim distance. The making of his bequest two years before his death for the establishment and the endowment of McGill College was the first step towards the fulfilment of his hopes. ”

“ As an educationalist Sir William Peterson was a mediator between the champions of pure learning and the advocates of the practical sciences. To him the University had a two-fold function; first 'to make good citizens,' and second 'to hand on the torch of knowledge to successive generations of students.' He believed that in order of teaching pure learning should precede applied science, that classical subjects should precede professional; but in spite of his Oxford training he could never be accused of sacrificing the practical in the University to the disciplinary. ”

“ The men who made McGill were men of far and clear vision, of unfaltering courage and unwavering faith. They never doubted the final breaking of the clouds; they were baffled only to fight better in their forward march on behalf of national enlightenment. They believed in the future greatness of Canada, and of the place of education in moulding their country's destiny. The students of to-day who enjoy the advantages of a great seat of learning are not always conscious of the toil and the anxiety, the weariness and the fret of their College's early years ”

“ In August, 1854, one of the contemporary newspapers, the Sun, which has long since disappeared, in referring to the needs of the University voiced editorially the opinions of the people:
“All we need,” it said, “are persons at the helm who will take an active interest in the progress and advancement of the institution.... It won't do to sit idly down—to follow the dignified and majestic example of Cambridge and Oxford. Montreal is not in England—it is in Canada. We have a way of doing things for ourselves. ”

“ In the half-century that has passed since the formation of the [255] “Women's Educational Association of Montreal,” with its humble beginnings and its scanty courses for “Associates in Arts,” the higher education of women has made undreamed of progress. In McGill it owes its guidance and its growth to the tolerance in a time of prejudice, the determination in a period of opposition, and the patient faith in a day of discouragement, of Sir William Dawson, who believed in the greatness of women's sphere and influence in his country and in the world. ”

“ No man could have done for McGill what he did and not make academic enemies. He found a group of professional schools, each more or less autonomous, and he transformed it into a University. His ideal of the unity of learning made it necessary that he should run counter to the traditions of the various schools in seeking to co-ordinate all departments of study, and he exposed himself to criticism, just as President Eliot of Harvard did in his similar work for his University ”

“ There is so intimate and obvious a connection between the education of youth and the general state of public morals, that I trust I shall not be thought to deviate from the duties that are more particularly assigned to me, if I presume to solicit your Excellency's attention to the disadvantages under which the Province has long laboured from the want of proper schools for the instruction of the children both of the higher and of the lower orders of the community. ”

“ Sir William Peterson was greatest as a scholar. It is hardly necessary that I refer to his brilliant career as a classical student at Edinburgh and Oxford, his priceless legacy to scholarship in the works of the Latin authors he edited and translated, his successful administration of University College, Dundee, at an extremely difficult time in its history, and his guidance of the affairs of McGill during its period of phenomenal growth from 1895 to 1919; for many of you who were his colleagues are better qualified than I to estimate the value of these activities. ”

“ It is a period in university life which sees, as a rule, an undreamed of growth and development from small beginnings to unlimited influence, from scanty resources and great disappointments to a large if not always adequate endowment and equipment, from a merely local service to a national and even a world educational power. This is distinctly true of the century of McGill University's story. It began as a College, intended to minister to a very small community. It has grown in one hundred years to serve the world. ”

“ We hope that our fellow-subjects of all persuasions will view, without jealousy or alarm, the provisions which we have proposed to make on this subject, and that they will carry their liberality so far as to give efficient aid to an Institution, founded, as we believe, on the only principles of which reason and religion can approve,—namely, the principle of giving it a known and acknowledged religious character. At all events, we have not refrained from adopting that course which our judgment has led us to prefer ”

“ There is no sting in a death like his: the grave is not his conqueror. Rather has death been swallowed up in victory—the victory of a full and complete life, marked by earnest endeavour, untiring industry, continuous devotion and self-sacrifice, together with an abiding and ever-present sense of dependence on the will of Heaven. ”

“ I say nothing respecting religion, but in the Chapel of the University Lectures on Theology may be given to Protestant students, which Roman Catholics shall not be required to attend. There are many particular regulations which I do not mention, I just furnish a crude outline.
“You are to recollect that if nothing be done, you will soon lose Mr. McGill's donation. The time will never again be so propitious. I say nothing about the nomination of Professors; men of some talent must be selected and of great zeal for the promotion of the Sciences. ”

“ He knew that without the torch of a free and liberal education the land of promise to which he had come and from which he had received much, could not advance to what he believed to be its destined place of power and service in the world. ”

“ With steps sometimes accelerated, sometimes slow, sometimes even faltering, its movement has been always onward. There have been no stopping-places in its life. It has not been possible here to give adequate notice or even reference to all its benefactors and to all the noble and unselfish men and women who helped in its advancement, to the distinguished graduates and sacrificing professors who brought honour to its name, to the discoveries, the theories and doctrines for improvement, whether intellectual or social or political, first fashioned in its shadow. ”

“ In December following a reception was given in Molson Hall to the benefactors of the University who had recently subscribed so generously to its revenue. At this gathering, Chancellor Day referred to the necessity for providing the means of furnishing a higher education for women, “a matter,” he said, “in which we are wofully behind the age.... I trust the time is not far distant when McGill College may become the privileged instrument of ministering to this urgent need. In this whole matter of education for either sex, women are directly and deeply interested.” ”

“ Such, too, were the conditions in which this hard-headed, practical business man dreamed a dream,—a dream of a greater Canada with a distinctly Canadian nationality trained to solve its own problems in its own way, and of the necessity for providing for the youth of the great land mirrored in his mind the privileges of an adequate education similar to that which he had enjoyed in his own native country. For James McGill seems to have been a combination of the practical Scottish business man and the dreaming Scottish mystic. ”

“ As a result of Sir William Dawson's constant anxieties and strenuous labours, his health had been for some time in a precarious state. In his annual University Lecture ten years before, he had said, “My connection with this University for the past twenty-eight years has been fraught with that happiness which results from the consciousness of effort in a worthy cause, and from association with such noble and self-sacrificing men as those who have built up McGill College. ”

“ The Charter which appoints us to be Governors declares that His Majesty desired the erection of this University in order to provide for the instruction of youth in the principles of true religion, as well as in the different branches of Science and Literature; and whatever may be the honest convictions of opposing Churches and Sects, we think it right to assume that when the Sovereign speaks of the principles of true religion, he means that which is the prevailing National Religion of the British Empire, and which he must himself have solemnly professed. ”

“ This note of courage and faith is all the more remarkable when we realise the exact condition of the University, without money, without Statutes, a fact which was used as an excuse for withholding funds, with but little sympathy from Provincial Government or Home Government, with its few Professors unpaid and pleading even for fuel and light, with unfinished and poorly equipped buildings falling rapidly into decay, with grounds uncared for, and with a very small enrollment of students. ”

“ If you will bear it about with you in your hearts, not only will you be kept from lip service, slackness, half-heartedness in your daily duties,—and from the graver faults of youth at which his noble soul would have revolted,—from dishonesty, sensuality and impurity in every form,—but you will be able, each in his sphere, to realise more fully the ideal of goodness and truth, so that at the last you, too, may hear the voices whispering as they have now spoken to him,—'Well done, thou good and faithful servant ”

“ There are only two Governors resident in Montreal—the Chief Justice of the District, and Dr. Bethune, who is a Governor in consequence of his holding the interim appointment of Principal. The other Governors, who occasionally act, are the Chief Justice of Upper Canada, and the Bishop of Montreal, both too distant from the College to take much part in the management of its affairs, and the latter having only very recently a title to do so. The Chief Justice of Montreal is unwilling, as a Roman Catholic, to interfere more than he can avoid in the government of a Protestant Institution ”

“ We have not been able to bring ourselves to take part in the establishment of an Institution for the education of youth without making provisions for their Religious Instruction, and for inculcating as a duty the worship of their Creator. We have therefore made certain Statutes respecting the performance of, and attendance at, Divine Service, and we have established, so far as our power extends, a Professorship of Divinity in our College. ”

“ The Governors were harassed by litigation and by not a little uncertainty; they were dismayed at times by the evident lack of sympathy and the discouraging indifference of officials of the Home Government. But they did not cease to hope, and they did not dream of abandoning their educational scheme. They would struggle on to the fulfilment of the founder's vision. It was the task of the newly appointed acting-Principal to carry out these plans and to take up the administration of the University in one of the most difficult and critical periods of its existence. ”

“ It will be found, on examination of the Statutes now submitted, that no test of a religious character is requisite, either from the Teachers or Scholars. Persons of any religious creed may, therefore, dispense instruction or receive it, except as regards religion itself, the College being equally open to all. But it will be found also that it is proposed to be distinctly made a Statute of the College, that no Professor, Lecturer or Tutor shall teach within it any principles contrary to the doctrines of the United Church of England and Ireland. ”

“ If we but follow the ideals of the men who made our University, with [274] their noble sacrifice, their splendid achievement and their unwavering faith as our heritage, the unwritten story of McGill's future will be more glorious even than the record of its past. ”

“ The Royal Institution for the Advancement of Learning THE Charter under which McGill University was established, was obtained on March 31st, 1821. The century mark in the University's history has now been passed. One hundred years is a long period in the life of a nation or a country; it is a longer period still in the life of an individual; but it is perhaps longest relatively in the life of an educational institution, particularly if that institution had its birth in struggling pioneer days. ”